South Africa: 2015-16 World Series - 2nd – Seabelo Senatla has been overall top try scorer for the past two series, and the speedster will be key to the Blitzboks' hopes of taking the next step up after being runner-up for the last four seasons. South Africa won the bronze medal at Rio 2016.

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NZ: 2015-16 World Series - 3rd – New Zealand is rebuilding after the disappointment of missing out on an Olympic medal, but veteran former captain DJ Forbes (pictured) has made a record 80th tournament appearance for the 12-time series champion in the Dubai opener. Former players Scott Waldrom and Tomasi Cama will be interim coaches until June 2017, when Scotsman Clark Laidlaw takes over from the departed Gordon Tietjens.

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Australia: 2015-16 World Series - 4th – Henry Hutchison (above) was last season's rookie of the year, scoring 27 tries, and the 19-year-old will again be a key player for Australia. Sam Caslick, brother of Olympic women's gold medalist Charlotte Caslick, is one of the new faces in the squad but her boyfriend, captain Lewis Holland, is ruled out with long-term injury.

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Argentina: 2015-16 World Series - 5th – Gaston Revol (right) will make his 50th tournament appearance at the Dubai season-opener -- only head coach Santiago Gomez Cora (61) and Nicolás Bruzzone (55) have played more for Pumas Sevens. The Argentina captain, 30, will hope to make amends for his crucial penalty miss in the sudden-death Olympic quarterfinal loss to Great Britain by winning the first sevens title of his career.

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United States: 2015-16 World Series - 6th – After matching their best series finish, the Americans disappointingly failed to make the quarterfinals at Rio 2016. Speedster Perry Baker (above) will again be a key player after finishing second in the try stakes last season, with 48 in 55 matches.

England: 2015-16 World Series - 8th – Tom Mitchell (above) captained Great Britain to a surprise silver medal at the Olympics, and he will be hoping England's Rio contingent can improve on last season -- which never matched the heights of reaching the final of the Dubai opener.

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Samoa: 2015-16 World Series - 9th – After a title-laden 20 years with New Zealand, legendary coach Gordon Tietjens has taken on a new challenge with Samoa. Englishman Damian McGrath guided the islanders to victory at the Paris Sevens but was sacked after only one season when the team failed to qualify for the Olympics.

France: 2015-16 World Series - 11th – Captain Terry Bouhraoua will be hoping for a more consistent season from France, which placed third at two tournaments but finished last at one -- and lost to Japan in the Olympic quarterfinals. Bouhraoua scored his 100th try in the 2016-17 season opener.

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Wales: 2015-16 World Series - 12th – Team GB silver medalist Sam Cross (above) is one of Wales' co-captains, but leading try scorer Luke Morgan will miss the opening two rounds of the new season after a knee injury dashed his hopes of going to the Olympics.

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Canada: 2015-16 World Series - 13th – After failing to qualify for the Olympics, Canada has turned to former Samoa coach McGrath. Points machine Nathan Hirayama (above) will again be a key player.

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Russia: 2015-16 World Series - 14th – German Davydov (right) enjoyed a strong debut series as Russia retained its core team status at the finale in London, with the 22-year-old's 20 tries in 53 games the team's second-best effort behind veteran Vladimir Ostroushko (26 in 40). Russia's men and women missed out on an Olympic place.

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Japan: 2015-16 World Series - Won promotion qualifier – As it did at the 2015 Rugby World Cup, Japan proved to be the surprise package at Rio 2016, finishing fourth with a blend of homegrown talent and overseas imports. Former New Zealand assistant Damian Karauna has replaced head coach Tomohiro Segawa ahead of Tokyo 2020, and he went into the Dubai opener with only three players who had previous world series experience.

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Story highlights

New sevens series start in Dubai

Aiming to capitalize on Rio 2016 success

Big gains in rugby's worldwide audience

(CNN)After an Olympic "fairytale," rugby is on a roll -- but can it maintain the momentum?

World Rugby CEO Brett Gosper says research has shown the sport has recruited 60 million fans in the past 18 months, with half of those coming from the six days when sevens made its debut at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

Now, three months later, Gosper is hoping the new Sevens World Series season can capitalize on the game's recent boom.

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"The series has been growing very rapidly," the Australian told CNN ahead of this week's opening men's and women's 2016-17 tournaments in Dubai.

"We had a new group of destinations last year -- Vancouver, Singapore, Sydney, Cape Town -- and we built our fan base, the actual attendance, to 700,000 -- which was considerably higher than the previous year.

"There's a huge buzz around that property. We've now got six stops on the women's tour, 10 on the men's tour. It's a bit like Formula One, it travels around the world, it's highly global.

"This is something that really can ensure that between Olympics, rugby sevens doesn't have a trough and retains that excitement throughout."

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Rio legacy

The International Olympic Committee will confirm next year which sports feature at Tokyo 2020, and Gosper is confident sevens will be on the program "for a long time" after the positive impact rugby made in Brazil following a 92-year absence.

"We knew when it got to the field the players would step up and perform because in the HSBC Sevens Series there's never a bad tournament, it's always spectacular. We really got the fairytale story in the end," he says.

"It sits well at the Olympics, we got some high ratings around the world from a broadcast perspective and there was a huge buzz. All of those things point to the fact we'll be in the Olympics for a long time, hopefully."

Brazil, however, is not in the men's world series -- Argentina, which placed fifth last season and sixth at the Olympics, is South America's sole representative among the core teams.

Brazil's women will again be part of the women's series, having improved from 10th last season to ninth at the Olympics.

"On the legacy front, we've been planning for a long time, working with the (Brazilian rugby) union to make sure that we can really embed the sport in the country," Gosper says.

"We've seen huge growth there around the Olympics, through sponsorship, and getting a rugby program in schools."

'Cherry Blossoms' bloom

There will be big interest in Japan's performance in the men's competition, having returned to the top tier.

The country's shock win over South Africa at the 2015 Rugby World Cup has stoked passion for the game there ahead of its own hosting of the 15-a-side tournament in 2019, while its sevens team made it to the semifinals of the Olympics before losing the bronze medal match against South Africa.

"It's very different for rugby to be in the context of Asia for the first time," Gosper says of the continent's debut staging of the game's premier tournament.

"We're expecting big crowds, big numbers of visitors and a really spectacular backdrop that we're not used to seeing in rugby. It will be culturally very different to any World Cup we've had before."

Nielsen Sports surveyed six of rugby's key markets before and after the Olympics -- Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Britain and the US -- and found that group alone had brought in almost 17 million new fans.

Gosper says Germany, where rugby is a minor sport, had TV audiences of four million during the Olympic sevens and three million for some 2015 World Cup matches.

"It's been in that country for a long time but it just seems to be going through a bit of a resurgence, as it is in Spain as well," he says.

Growing the game

The big prizes, however, are the US and Chinese markets.

"The United States is not just an investment market in terms of growth in numbers, for us it's a return-on-investment market because we'll see that in terms of revenue, in terms of broadcast during Rugby World Cups. It's already the fastest growing team sport in America."

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World Rugby has signed a 10-year, $100 million deal with Ali Sports -- part of e-commerce giant Alibaba -- aimed at growing the Chinese game from grassroots level and setting up professional leagues.

"One day they'd like to host a Rugby World Cup as well. They're in a hurry to do big things in rugby so that can only, of course with the population they have, result in huge numbers," Gosper says.

China is a long way from having a sevens team in the world series, but it can take inspiration from the recent progress of Uganda -- which returns this week after a decade away.

The African rugby minnow won its 2016 regional tournament to earn an invitational place at the first two rounds in Dubai and Cape Town (December 10-11), and will also have the chance to earn a spot for the 2017-18 series in April's qualifier at the Hong Kong Sevens.